Parrot in Bush

Albert Tucker

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Following his return to Australia in the early 1960s and buoyed by economic success, Tucker purchased his bush property around an hour out of Melbourne, which was to inspire a new direction in his artistic oeuvre.

From his second storey studio, seemingly enveloped by the Manna Gums he loved, Tucker observed the richness of colour of the trees, bark and leaves. “He began to paint and draw the forms and colours of ‘his’ patch of bush. Close-ups of the massive eucalypt trunks, with their peeling stringybark, long drooping leaves and great burls supplanted the crated landscape of his outback imagination.” (Fry, Gavin, Albert Tucker, The Beagle Press, 2005, p.198)

Tucker also brought to these paintings a new feeling of colour drawn from the brilliantly coloured King Parrots, that played, fought and nested in the branches within arm’s reach. The parrots were to become for Tucker, both an emblem of beauty and a symbol cruelty with their spanner beaks and chilling screech.